 jmn1207Premium
join:2000-07-19
Ashburn, VA
kudos:1 | reply to sonicmerlin
Re: Capacity Issue said by sonicmerlin:Make more room for what...? Since when is fiber a limited capacity transfer medium? Verizon chose to use existing broadcasting methods to save money. The set-top-boxes and the head-end equipment have a limited amounted of QAM channels over an 870MHz frequency range for TV delivery. Since they went with a 2 HD channel per QAM build, they have now run out of space and are unable to add any new HD channels to the lineup.
Just today Verizon dropped 4 West Coast feeds to some premium HD movie channels that were largely duplicates in order to allow room to add some new channels. |
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iansltx
join:2007-02-19
Golden, CO
kudos:2 | Wait...you're saying that there' 870MHz worth of digital, interesting TV out there? |
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jmn1207Premium
join:2000-07-19
Ashburn, VA
kudos:1 | Amazing huh?
At 6Mhz per channel, there are about 140-150 QAM channels. FiOS uses up to 10 for SD stations per QAM and 2 HD stations per QAM. With all of the rules requiring them to make so much room for local stuff, they really have run out of space to add some HD channels that the cable competitors are now offering.
A rumor going around is that many of the SD channels might be moved to an IPTV system to recover some more space, although this would cripple those of us with CableCard devices, as these channels would no longer be available. |
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iansltx
join:2007-02-19
Golden, CO
kudos:2 | Why can't they just upgrade the system to 1GHz? |
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jmn1207Premium
join:2000-07-19
Ashburn, VA
kudos:1 | said by iansltx:Why can't they just upgrade the system to 1GHz? They need equipment that can work at this extended frequency. None of their set-top-boxes currently in circulation are capable of handling 1 GHz. It's an expensive update, as Cox Cable can agree.
It's possible to only add premium channels in the upper spectrum and distribute new DVR's with 1 GHz tuners to these customers, but that is still quite a complicated endeavor and makes for very restricted limitations on channel lineups. |
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MisterBillVerizon FiOS
join:2002-06-05
Yorktown Heights, NY | reply to jmn1207
said by jmn1207  Just today Verizon dropped 4 West Coast feeds to some premium HD movie channels that were largely duplicates in order to allow room to add some new channels. [/BQUOTE :I thought they did it to answer the TWC commercial accusing them of inflating the # of HD channels they had when some were just time-shifted duplicates (which I thought was stupid because if I want to watch something NOW, I don't care that it's 3 hours off from another channel that I have). |
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